520: How An Elite Footballer Built A Billion Dollar Sneaker Brand | Tim Brown [VIDEO]

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. We were told launching just online in America and New Zealand would never work. We were told that we could never survive with just one shoe and that our simple approach and minimalistic approach to design was just not going to resonate. We did a million dollars in the first month. In the early stages we were laser focused. This is about a product, it's about a customer, it's about a culture and it was really clear that we stood for something. Along the way it just started to move so quickly and we lost some focus and a little bit of clarity on exactly what we're about.

1:19We've learned some tough lessons in the last couple of years and we've done that through the lens of public company experience which has shown an even brighter spotlight on it and it's just part of the journey. I believe this can be a 100-year brand. In fact, I've never been clearer on that. Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow, and scale your business. So don't forget to hit subscribe. Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you so much for subscribing.

1:52Let's get stuck in today's discussion. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:08Thank you so much for taking the time. The first question that I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? so I uh founded Allbirds well started the journey that would become Allbirds when I was still playing professional sport I was playing uh in the A-League in Australia actually for the New Zealand team um and uh one of the big reasons you play professional sport is to get free gear and I got lots of it and uh from one of the big sportswear companies that shall not be named and it was made from plastic largely almost entirely and it had big logos and I had this insight that there was a better way of doing it and so I set out on really what was a curiosity journey no business plan no strategy no experience while I was still playing football to try and solve what initially I saw as a design problem simplicity minimalism in the footwear space while I was still playing sport.

3:09I had no right to do it. I had no anticipation of how far or where it would take me, but it was curiosity and that ended up getting me this job and I feel very, very fortunate that I started. Yeah. And how has your experience really shaped as a footballer, shaped your business career and how has it helped you? Oh, yeah. There's so many overlaps. As my co-founder Joey likes to point out, I had to lean on my sporting experience because I'd never had any other job, which is true. But there's so much. I mean, obviously, team. I think one of the things I realized early on is that to found a business, you don't have to pretend like you can do everything well.

4:01um and usually to make a path and in professional sport and certainly for me it was finding the one or two things that you did well that was unique to the team or could contribute to the team and do that a lot um and uh and uh and that's what I tried to do I was able to make a professional career out of that and go to the world cup in New Zealand kind of doing one or two things really really well and a lot of things that I didn't even try to do and so understanding that role you know I think as an athlete too you get kind of good and I think I've realized this more in hindsight setting a big goal hey I want to go to a world cup and then going to practice on Monday morning and just understanding you got to do that and you're gonna go again the next day and the next day and it's not always obvious that you're making improvements but that those improvements can compound over time and if you stick with something long enough lo and behold you can get quite good at it.

5:00And I think one of the big challenges certainly for early stage entrepreneurs is a sort of the shiny object syndrome where you're chasing something, a new tech, a new idea, a new co-founder, a new article you've just read. And actually a lot of this is just sticking with something to develop mastery. And I think as an athlete, you understand that on some level deep down inside that it's sticking with something. Yeah. And was Allbirds your first business? It was, albeit that it went through a few incarnations. Yeah, I was actually sharing this with the team the other day. Again, I started the first one and needed a brand, and I kind of used my initials, some version of them.

5:41That wasn't really thought out. And then just to give people some context, I probably started working on this in 2007.

5:532008, went through hundreds of prototypes. I retired from sport actually in 2012, so five years later. So it was five years of working on this, a little bit with my brother, with a few different friends. We'd made a few shoes at this point. I'd found a factory online. 2014, I retired, went to London, went to business school, took an entrepreneurship class with a professor called Carter Cast, who told me that he'd been teaching for a long time. This is by far and away the worst business idea that he'd seen. but he encouraged me to put it on Kickstarter, the idea of a merino wool shoe, so that it could fail and I could get on with my life.

6:33And I did that with the help of my brother in 2014. So we're talking kind of like seven years at this point. And then Allbirds with Joey, my co-founder, we moved to San Francisco and we launched Allbirds on the 1st of March, 2016. And there was one other brand name that I'd used through the Kickstarter that was really bad, so bad that I can't even say it out loud. You got to share. No, it was called 3 over 7. So part of the founding story was like I was transitioning from sport and I wanted to kind of, I saw this opportunity in minimalist design and footwear, but also in sort of everyday movement.

7:11And so this idea of kind of jogging, which is actually has its origins in New Zealand, strangely enough, in the 1960s. and there was an opportunity to kind of build around a brand around this idea of you know going for a jog every other day so um that was part of the story but that for a host of reasons that wasn't quite right and then you know we got to all birds so you know but but that was 2016 2007 you know you forget it's like nine years of sticking with something and then now here we are in 2023 nearly 2024 um and uh and you're still you're still working out how to do this you're still kind of showing up at training every day getting a little bit better yeah love it it's crazy so most people would think right like after seven years you would have given up on the idea what kept you going well um part of it something inside of you you know and it took a little while to polish that um and understand like what that that was i i sort of had an experience in and football that served me pretty well like I I managed to you know get up through the grades or whatever and get to the professional level um and that was all well and good it was it was really you know kind of a childhood dream but when I experienced that I felt like there was something missing a little bit um even though I knew how lucky I was and then at the same time I was fortunate or around the same time started to play for New Zealand and dream of going to a World Cup up in 2010 that hadn't happened in 28 years and it was the type of goal that sort of transcended me and was more for my country obviously but my family community and I was prepared to kind of do whatever it took it kind of and so the power of a purpose the power of a dream transcending the challenges of the moment is not a new idea but I felt that and lived it and at the same time you know I was playing sport it wasn't until 2012 that I ever retired so and then I was a student so I was kind of doing other things it wasn't a full-time gig put money on the table so I had a little bit of time but there was something inside of me that didn't want to give up I had a lot of friends and family that kind of kept going hey you know there's something here even though the world's telling you that kind of like the world's kind of laughing at you a little bit there's something here keep going so that support network is hugely important and then there's along the way I met Joey and realized that, hey, we were making shoes out of wool and natural materials, but there was something else going on, that we were in the early chapters of a transformation of our economy, of all the products and services that we use towards a sustainable net zero impact kind of future.

9:57And that the fashion industry had been playing lip service to this transformation. And there was an opportunity to build a different type of business with this with this mission in mind. And that really gave birth to Allbirds and unlocked what we founded in 2016. So the power of a few things, friends, family, that little part of you that just is counterintuitive and wants to keep going when people tell you that you can't. And then there's just the role of purpose. And that was sort of a little bit my story, I think. and five six seven years on a side hustle that still is like a relatively long time to go to market what like what why why did it take so long well it didn't in the sense that i took you know i started selling shoes and we put some in a shoe shop in wellington and i had an apartment full and my brother helped me so i wasn't just sort of like war cream um yeah i really got some good advice early on that you know i an idea is an idea certainly in a business context until you have the courage to put it out in the world and have someone other than your mom pay for it.

10:59And only when that happens do you start to learn. And so there was a number of sort of commercial moments along the way there, pop-up shops and different things we did. And then the first shoes were really driven by the design insight, but not a material innovation. And then the idea that there was an opportunity with natural materials came a little bit later on the back of a research grant and then was the basis of launching on Kickstarter. we had a thousand pairs of shoes. We sold them in four days for$120 ,000. And that was real commercial traction in early 2014. And that was the basis for then partnering with Joey and raising a couple of million dollars seed round, which really kicked us off.

11:41And now we sit here as a publicly listed company with a thousand employees and it's been a whirlwind of seven years since we founded. But look, people want to believe in the overnight success. I've very rarely ever heard of one. This is about sticking with something for a long time. And so the reasons why you're doing it and the support network of people around you are hugely, hugely, hugely important. Yeah. And did you ever doubt yourself? This morning. What do you mean? Oh, look, it's pretty constant. I mean, I think as you get, you know, I was retired from sport and this is a fairly like pressurized environment.

12:25Look, I mean, I wasn't playing for Manchester United, but you're up in front of people each week and, you know, you open the newspaper and they say you're not very good. And some of that stuff was, you know, I came to realize that that insecurity was sort of a part of me. I thought it might stop when I started playing sport and it probably got louder as I went into sort of the next phase of my career and starting a business. And then I came to understand that, look, if I was running the corner store, the dairy on the corner, I'd have that. I just, in some ways I kind of needed a little bit that you want to, that it's hardwired into you to have a little sense of doubt.

13:06and you've got to be really careful with it. It's like anything else, but it can be managed and it can be a competitive advantage. It can be the thing that allows you to retain humility and to be curious and to keep learning and to believe you can always get a little bit better and to think that, and also to be really appreciative that you're lucky for all the opportunities and you're not that good. A lot of those things are kind of Kiwi values, New Zealand values but they're also also mine and I've come to kind of you know to to understand that just that's just a little part of me and and probably in some shape or form just just about everyone has them and so it's all about how you use them to your advantage and manage those voices and those feelings and some of them can be harnessed for a lot of good I think and so how do you harness them like could we go a bit deeper there yeah look I mean I think I've a few different ways.

14:04I think, I feel like I'm very, very connected to where I'm from. And in my particular case, it's New Zealand, it's Wellington, my family and friends. And I, you know, I'm connected to a lot of people that I grew up with and people that I've met along the way, university and, and who know me pretty well, know me before and have journeyed and helped me and as I've walked through different moments and hopefully I've done the same in different shape or form. So that sense of, of where I'm from is really, really important to me. And I feel like I'm representing them. And, um, and I think it allows you to never think that you're too good, nor that you're, that you're not good at all.

14:52That there's, it's somewhere in between. And you know, I've had a lot of good fortune, a lot of people that have gone out of their way to support me and give me opportunities. And there's a lot of, um, things that I've tried to do along the way to say thank you and show appreciation and always remember that. And, um, and so, yeah, I think that, that mental model, I think is quite important to me. Um, uh, and I look as you have some success, I think there is a tendency to kind of, you know, chase new friendships and new connections and, and lose that sense. And, um, uh, and I've seen people do that and lose their way.

15:26And so that connection to where you come from, I mean, certainly there's a lot of lessons in Maori-dom and in New Zealand indigenous culture around that. There's actually a close friend of mine I was just with this week called Owen Eastwood, who's written a book called Belonging that I would highly recommend to anyone who's starting and building a business. and it leverages a lot of the principles of Maori community and mythology and the idea of whakapapa, which is the sense that we're all connected to the people that came before us and that will come after us in an unbreakable bond. And at any given moment, a light shines on you and you make the most of it, but you should always stay connected and be aware of where you're from.

16:09So I think it's influenced my ability to talk about that, Owen's thinking, but I think it's always been there that, you know, where I come from is really, really important.

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17:23That's P-L-U-S or click the link in the show notes. All right, now let's jump back in the show. And it's really interesting. You talk about, you know, overnight successes don't exist. You've never seen them. But many would look at all birds and the speed of growth as an overnight success in many ways. It didn't feel like that for you? Yes. Look, I mean, except you've got to realize that for a long time, I mean, 2007 to 2014, no one really like returning your phone calls, quote unquote. Like no one's thinking that's particularly good. I tell you, anyone who wants to launch a business idea, try and do that in a football locker room and try and do that with people that are getting free gear and try and charge them for it.

18:21You know, there's a bunch of stuff. And then along the way, people coming out of their woodwork, out of the woodwork seemingly to tell me, you know, it wasn't going to work. Particularly industry experts, people that knew footwear and knew the category said, hey, this is just too hard. You know, you should give up. But counterintuitively, those experts fuel you. And along the way, you find little nuggets and pockets of inspiration and people that cheer you on. And yeah, and so then all of a moment, all of a sudden it starts to work. and we did a lot of work, a lot of thinking. But right up until we launched the Allbirds on the 1st of March, 2016, just moved to San Francisco, Joey and I had raised a little bit of money, built the Allbirds brand to accompany the product.

19:05We were told launching just online in America and New Zealand would never work. We were told that we could never survive with just one shoe and that our simple approach and minimalistic approach to design was just not going to resonate. and you know we did a million dollars in the first month a million pairs of that one shoe in the first year and a half give or take and it just sort of it took off and time magazine called the shoes the world's most comfortable and there's a there's a tremendous amount of hard work and there's a tremendous amount of luck and you make your own right we were prepared and we'd done a lot of thinking and I think we had the courage to be simple and clear um and uh we we'd had a lot of feedback.

19:47And I like to sort of say, if you don't seek feedback on your business idea, you're dumb. But if you listen to all of it, you're even more dumb. You have to have this sort of instinctive feel for what you want to do. And if everyone's telling you your idea is good, it's almost, I promise you it is not. You actually want to lean into the criticism. And certainly for me, when I look back, the people that knew the most were the most critical and they were missing everything that we were trying to do um so i think there's a certain amount of courage and the ability to sort of just walk through some of that stuff that's pretty important yeah every single super successful founder i've interviewed there has to be this they're moving into an industry and there's this level of naivety right i like that that's been a big part of this right like you've gone into a category that you knew nothing about it's super saturated.

20:42Yes. The power of being asked really simple questions. I remember the first footwear factory I ever walked into, I'd found it. It was in Indonesia. I'd found it online, literally Googled a factory. Showed up in my off season on holiday and walked into this factory. I was like, oh my gosh, why is it done that way? You realize there's this antiquated industry, enormous industries, something like 20 billion pairs of shoes made each year, but the methods of make and manufacturing haven't changed all that much. It's heavily reliant on low cost labor. It tends to, when you look through history, it's chased that from its origins and maybe Japan and it goes to where the cheapest labor can be over time for the most part, not always true.

21:28And it tends to default to using really cheap materials for the most part, largely plastic ones and uh and the sizing system i mean anyone who's tried on shoes across different brands like it's different in each case and there's a bunch of things you're like oh why is it that way and no one can give you a good answer that usually means that there may be the basis or an opportunity for innovation or thinking about it differently so yeah i think i try to maintain that level of like childlike curiosity um uh i think it's a it's the best way to live and whomever you meet and whatever capacity you can always learn something and oftentimes the burden or baggage of of either your own ego of kind of feeling like you know something or you have all the answers will will limit your ability to be creative or to push something forward even more so when you're successful and i think about that in in the current context for all birds for sure yeah i agree uh has there ever been in a time in this all birds journey where you felt invincible and everything that you did turned to gold and you just couldn't lose it's a funny thing in the arc of this stuff like um sometimes in those moments um you know it's usually when you were on the on the outside when it it's never looked better usually when you're fumbling with something internally um and i think about you know a month after we'd launched things were just going like unbelievably well you know and um joey and i my co-founder had kind of a you know first big disagreement and there's a bunch of things that we'd sort of put on ice around our relationship as co-founders that had sort of come back to bite us a little bit and um and so yeah equally so you you do have to you know invest in relationships you've got to maintain humility and curiosity, stick to your values.

23:32There's a flip side of this where there's never get too high or too low. Part of this is about enjoying the process. And I think there's a real art, certainly an art to the best entrepreneurs that I've been around of celebrating the small wins of just enjoying the process so much. There's a book again, I'm not a huge business book guy, but there's a book and a guy that I, a real hero of mine called Danny Meyer and he wrote a business book called Setting the Table and basically the gist of it is there's a scene in the book but one of his mentors takes a tablecloth and then there's a square white table and he places a salt and pepper shaker right in the middle and he says, what would you do if I moved it?

24:22And he moves it just off center and Danny grabs it and puts it right back in the center. What are you going to do if I do that again and he moves it again and then Danny puts it back in the center and he said running a restaurant is about knowing that every single day you come in someone's going to take that salt and pepper shaker that you've prepared perfectly in the middle of this beautiful white table and I'm going to take it off center and you have to put it back in the center and hold true to the standards and the vision and moreover unless you find a way to really enjoy that and find purpose in it you're going to get worn down and tired like that's the whole game and that had a profound impact on me and I think when I played sport I had this bottle of champagne like a nice bottle of champagne and I had it in my apartment and I was so determined that we were going to go to the world cup I was like just when we get there and we qualified I didn't open it we went to the world cup we had a pretty good run there didn't open it and I retired I still hadn't opened it there was always the sense and i i promised myself that i was going to enjoy the all birds journey and the little wins we're going to celebrate and i think we've done a pretty good pretty good job of that it's super important because you never know like you could have the best idea in the world and be the smartest guy in the world could come and you know flip you upside down and uh so that ability to to celebrate the small wins i think is essential to maintaining your perspective and also making the journey fun.

25:49And I think it guarantees you, I believe it gives you a much larger chance of long-term success if you can find a way to celebrate the small wins and enjoy the process. Because along the way, you can start as a team, to use that metaphor, you can play really well and lose the game on the weekend. But in the fullness of time, the teams that keep showing up, keep training, keep improving, they win the season, right? And so I think those little wins are super important. I think I've learned that and how do you celebrate them can you tell us like how you have or any crazy stories or anything fun i don't know it's i don't know there's crazy stories i've got two little kids now though those days are those days are gone i you know i do i do um i've tried to devote a little bit of my time each week um to helping out people it's largely in a new zealand context and i've done this really from the founding of all but it's a little bit of time and it's not like two to four, but it's the sense of, hey, for better or worse, I've been put in a really fortuitous position here in San Francisco in this venture ecosystem.

26:52And we raised a bit of money and we built the business and we had a little bit of success along the way. I'm going to help out, just give a little bit of advice. I'm going to make time. Usually I end up getting more from those conversations than I do the other way around. And it's my little way, and I don't want to overplay this as some sort of altruistic act, but it's my little way of saying thank you and helping the people who the light is shining on or will shine on at some point. So that's a part of it. And it's a practice of sort of gratitude and perspective. And it always allows me, I think, to mine my own personal story and appreciation for all the luck that I've had along the way.

27:30I carry with me and have done since I was a design student at university on a soccer scholarship, little journals that scraps, ideas, thoughts are full of largely mediocre ideas, but that ability to, certainly for me, I've come to understand that the act of creativity and of considering myself a creative and observing and writing things down is a part of maintaining that sense of possibility and always believing that there's something else you can do. So those journals are sort of something pretty important to me. And then once a year, I do a trip with three of my college friends and I'm back to New Zealand regularly.

28:20And those connections to the people in my story who have helped me to make sure that I'm there for them are really super important. and without even going to family, which is obviously right at the top of the tree. So those types of things, I think I've learned to be a little bit more conscious in my allocation of energy and time towards those things and they help you a lot. Yeah, no, I really respect that. It's really grounding to hear. So let's talk about some modern challenges. You told the Wall Street Journal this past year, you know as you've tried to expand and grow the brand you created products that haven't quite met the mark what could you share with our audience when it comes to creating products that do hit the mark or don't hit the mark in their early stage journey what what what lessons what what have you learned from those misses yeah i think it's um it's so much um about a couple of things First of all, perspective.

29:25I saw this wonderful interview from Rafael Nadal, the tennis player. And he said he just lost a game, some sort of final. And he said, oh, the reason I play tennis is I want to feel all the emotions. That's why I play sport. And I was like, oh, shit, that's awesome. you know it's like um you you actually the reason why you're entrepreneurial is that exposes you to a sense of like challenge and um and and and that pressure i've certainly knew as an athlete and i've come to understand as a sort of a creator founder entrepreneur whatever label you want to use is a little bit of a privilege right really is a privilege and you you know if you're lucky you get to have people come and join your team and you get to establish a culture and all that stuff is just real, real, real privilege.

30:18And you got to kind of keep that in perspective. So perspective is super important, but to answer your question, like in the early stages, we were like laser focused and we sort of said no to 99 things that we said yes to. And whether that be meeting with investors or we were like, this is about our product, it's about our customer, it's about our culture and you know along the way it just started to move so quickly and we had some mitigating factors COVID hired you know at one point half our workforce through that period we went from this incredible in office culture to sort of a hybrid all those things you probably know you talk to people about and then equally we just you know we lost some focus and a little bit of clarity on exactly what we're about.

31:06And it slips away. And when it goes, you can start to move a little. This is not a new story, right? Or a new idea. You can make some things and take some shortcuts and do some stuff that in the fullness of time. So much like Danny Meyer and setting the table example, you have to show up every day and be really, really clear on what those standards are. and it can be tricky. And we've learned some tough lessons in the last couple of years and we've done that through the lens of public company experience, which has shown an even brighter spotlight on it. And I don't think it was exactly that Wall Street Journal article though, but I actually put, I posted one of the negative articles that came, I put it up on LinkedIn because I was like, oh, I only ever put good news up here, up on here, but I'm going to put one of the bad ones.

31:56And it was actually like pretty, I didn't expect it. A lot of people wanted to talk about that. It's just part of the journey. It ebbs and flows. I believe this can be a 100-year brand. In fact, I've never been clearer on that. Maybe even in this last week, we've had a great week with a few different things about the potential for that. This won't be the last time we don't put the salt shaker exactly back in the center of the table. We're going to have to reset, refocus, go back to your values, you know own own the the the criticism that comes your way and you know and go again and that's what we're in the process of doing not always fun but you know as is always the case pretty you learn a lot and over the past i'd say 12 24 months it's been difficult for direct to consumer brands it's been challenging right like i think everyone thought that the covid boom was going to continue and everyone hired and scaled up and planned accordingly.

32:53I'm curious to hear just from your view of the world, what changes have you made? How are you thinking about things to ensure long-term sustainability of the brand? What is a direct-to-consumer brand? Is that like a real thing, do you think? Or is that just like a label that the media has sort of used to group together a bunch of companies? Who's really started with that as part of their identity? I know we didn't. We started with a focus and deep purpose on the idea of making better things in a better way to support what we believe was going to be a sustainable revolution. And we were going to make the world's most comfortable shoes leveraging Merino wool.

33:34And we used a channel to start and grow that business, even though we knew 85 % of the product, give or take, was sold offline in our category. So there was never the sense that that was part of our identity. And yet we've been lumped. We wanted to build a brand. And it was a creative act that we believed and still believe is full of commercial potential. But who else is directing? What actually does that even mean? I think we make things and then we use channels to sell them. And the popularity of those channels will ebb and flow as the world ebbs and flows. and so I'm yet to kind of truly understand what a direct to consumer business actually is and that being said hey COVID has shifted things around you got to be nimble um and you got to change but the only you know I heard this the other day from the new CEO at Gap at a thing I went to in London called Richard Dickinson he was super impressive and he said your purpose is immortal that's the thing and uh he was talking about the transformation of Gap and he showed a photo of the first store and you know your business is not founded for a channel it's founded for a reason and a problem that you want to solve and so yeah focus on that and um and focus on delivering value to all the things we know so i just kind of challenge the framework a little bit i think it's a bit of a crutch in the media and it's a little bit meaningless yeah that's fair i appreciate that perspective look it's not going away it's it's you know i mean again what's to be said about that except that it's so much less, at least in our particular case, less about the channel and more about the quality of the thing that you make and the value that you provide and the purpose that hopefully lasts forever.